Did you use them? Did they add something to the scenario. I like the idea of using them but simply using them as a random ambush is not the way to go. The PC's could survive and may struggle to deduce who the hell the attackers were or in the worst case, cell 17 could win (I have got 7 rank 6 players but cell 17 look pretty tough and with a good ambush it could get nasty). Silas Marr is the PC's new inquisitor so he could tip them off that they may have become a target because of their previous involvement with the Haarlock legacy and the tyrant star. However, if I use cell 17 I want to add something more. Any tips?

I was wondering along similar lines and then had a brainwave.

The acolytes had managed to alienate practically every faction in the city and when it got to the final combat I introduced Cell 17 as allies and swapped Jonas out for Sgt. Forden, from Shades on Twilight, who'd escaped the last time the party encountered him. One Acolyte, Luca, is pretty sure it's Forden however his companions didn't make their Awareness role and Luca is known for being paranoid and jumpy.

I remade Cell 17 as acolytes of a radical Ordos Xenos Inquisitor who is seeking knowledge about Haarlock as a way to combat the Slaught and this way, if Luca doesn't convince his fellows who 'Jonas' is they can reappear again later, maybe on Mara or un one of my own adventures inbetween.

You could always have them help your players then attack them later.

I agree though that as written they'd wipe the floor with many groups of acolytes.

I didn't use them, they seemed mega powerful and using them as ambushers, especially more or less omniscient ambushers, would wipe out my party and probably draw away all attention from the investigation into the murders.

But they're kinda a cool concept, so yeah, I might be using them later.

I plan to use them simply to show that part of the Inquisition starts to take interest in the whole Haarlock legacy. My PCs (5 rank 5) more and more start to get a picture of the inner workings of the Inquisition and that it is not “The Inquisition”, but many different Inquisitors and factions with differing agendas and all.

Ambush situations are always rather deadly in my opinion and a good sniper can kill an acolyte with a single shot (thus it is very depressing for players if you have no chance to react to such a threat). So, the Assassin of Cell 17 somewhere hidden on the roofs of Sinophia Magna is the greatest threat in my opinion. Otherwise 7 rank 6 players should eat Cell 17 for breakfast in my view, except if these seven are all Adepts...

Yeah, my group are 5 Rank 8 Acolytes, including a Heavy-bolter wielding Sister and Over-The-Top-Psyker-of-Death. They would hardly break a sweat facing cell 17 in a fair fight.

So they won't get the chance

My group were in the rank 5 area, and well equipped/geared for their rank (bolters or hellguns, and high quality chain weapons) so I had them run into Cell 17, starting out with a gun cutter airborne duel that the PCs won out on cause of some lucky rolls.

They decided not to strafe the crash site and instead followed up on foot, with some support from their tech-priest on the cutter (basically hosed the mansion Cell 17s crashed cutter had slammed into).

They made some very poor tactical choices against the wounded (from teh crash) spectre operatives and got blown all to hell, but managed to prevail. Unfortunately, they were headed towards the final confrontation at the Folly when they finally wised up to being followed so they were pretty beatup when they started messing with the tower and the events there...still, if they'd chosen to play smarter tactically, it would not have been an insurmountable challenge from what's presented in the book. Also, a lot depends on the timing.

A lot will depend not just on your group's level, but also their gear and how generous/good they've been.

It was their first hint that not all factions within the Inquisition are equally co-operative, or happy with their snooping into the Legacy...

Overall, I considered it a worthwhile addition for several reasons. The first being the indication that not all is group hugs and high fives within the Ordo Calixis. The second was the spectre Templar, which gave them some cool moments and provided the group's psyker with a force sword ( a bit early but what the hell). Lastly, it was a valuable lesson in what not to do, and the damage assumptions can cause you (they assumed the crashed guys were all trapped in the wreck and/or dead and injured), so it was a nice tactical wake-up call.

Thanks for the replies. In response to the comments that my team should wipe them out, well I think I am on the stingy end of the spectrum of GM’s. They have the odd bolter and one power sword in the group but heavy bolter! No way! Also, the group psyker is a bit of a feeble wretch. She started off weak and her life as a psyker has made her much feebler. She carries a lot of stimms to just keep her going. She can be quite nasty with divine shot but nothing like the killing machines I read about on this forum. That being said, in a stand up fight, I think my group would win. However, as I am sure I do not need to point out, this should not be run as a stand up fight.

My first instinct is to go for the old car bomb. Then the first one out of the wreckage gets sniped by the assassin whist the soldier opens up through the rear window of the dark windowed van he is set up in. Then in the confusion the psyker pops out of the sewer he has been hiding in and starts tearing in with his force sword (this can do some mega damage). The unit leader who is coordinating the strike steps in with his bolt pistol and powers sword when/if required. Although this presents a great opportunity to show off factions with the inquisition (presuming the pc’s figure it out) it’s a nasty fight that does not really push forward the main plot. I could drop the car bomb and just start things with the assassin sniping the NPC driver of the vehicle the PC’s are in but it could still end up quite nasty.

To top it off, even if the group end up with a lovely force sword, the psyker will struggle to carry it never mind use it.

If your acolytes have high enough awareness and paranoia they will ambush spectre cell 17

I´m preparing to run this adventure and I have no doubt that even with only 3 rank 6 acolytes they will win. They are simply too paranoid, sneaky and clever to get caught in an ambush.

Don´t be afraid to throw bad stuff at your players, they will always find a way to surpass any challenge. Players are funny in that way. They may be banged up and shot to pieces but they will win.

I am stringy as well (only SP and Las weapons apart from one Bolt Pistol, no heavy weapons, a single chainsword so far). And I also wonder about the min-maxed Psykers one can read about in the forum here. My group’s rank 5 Telepath (Legate Investigator) wields a Bastard Sword with SB 2 with modest effect, besides using Inspire, Psychic Scream and Fearful Aura to support the group. Still, your players outnumber Cell 17 almost 2:1 and numbers are very important (in DH) due to focussing and all. An ambush (as already mentioned) is deadly indeed, so you could opt for letting the PCs make an Awareness test (maybe opposed to Cell 17’s assassin’s Concealment, Silent Move or Shadowing) to detect the assassin. When the skulking assassin is detected as a shadow on the roof 9 out of 10 PCs will react as paranoid as Storhamster mentioned and (re)act accordingly.

Cell 17 could also act rather impetuous in a way as they most probably feel quite self-opinionated and do not expect these unknown acolytes to be a threat at all. So start with a sniping assassin and when the PCs go to cover and/or start engaging the assassin, let the other three appear from nowhere.
It does not really further the main plot, but at times it is good to distract a little from it and to introduce some sort of meta plot.

Besides, I like to have rather mediocre talented characters to wield the potentially most deadly weapons. So, your feeble Psyker with a Force Sword is a great way to have this maybe weak chance to hit in combat, but when lucky enough to hit it deals loads of damage…

I'm planning on using *a* Spectre Cell 17, though taking the best characters from Damned Cities and Shades on Twilight to create a composite cell. I think the value of them is, as other people say, showing the factionalism inherent in the Inquisition. If they're just a combat encounter, it sort of wastes their potential, I think.

My initial thoughts are that during the investigation into the murders on the planet, the Acolytes will get ambushed and captured. Jonas Dray will warn them off the Haarlock Legacy. Obviously this won't deter them too much, and will set them up for later. I imagine you could easily use the Spectres as one of the factions in the Blind Tesseract, and if you ran any games between Damned Cities and Dead Stars they could pop up. I think making them a recurring threat is a good way to deal with them. If they cause a great deal of damage the first time, it gives the players time to even the odds. (They could even take matters into their own hands and try to hunt down the Spectres after they finish off matters on Sinophia.)

Spectre Cell 17 were one of the best things about Damned Cities and I used them as i thought everything else was slightly under powered for rank 5 Acolytes. They also re-appeared in Dead Stars as Inquisitors Herod's mob.

The scum character was a double agent and providing intel to Spectre Cell 17 the whole time, it was he who led them into the ambush. Which was an epic fight that they barely survived with the psyker performing some heroics and managing to call for help from the Arbites team in their rhino, with their arrival Spectre Cell 17 fled but re-appeared at the end with the final shard piece ( secretly passed to them by the scum) and claimed the prize of releasing the daemon.

After Silas Marr was furious and obtained intelligence on where the safe house for two of the members was and sanctioned a hit. It didn't go well and the scum character tipped them off anyway.

Ultimately It resulted in some brilliant RP when the other Acolytes found out on Mara as Herod revealed the truth to them and the gun the scum had drawn was slowly turned on his former colleagues.

Anyway Herod revealed that he was in fact a Horusian and intended to let Haarlock through the gate as the 2nd coming and to have any chance of defeating Master Nonesuch and Miss Book the Acolytes and Spectre Cell 17/Herod formed a shaky alliance. Epic finale fight where Spectre Cell 17 were killed to a man with only Herod surviving.

I ran Damned Cities as my group's first Ascension mission, so I padded the story with some of my own material and obviously buffed up the challenges a bit.

I included Spectre Cell 17, adding a second soldier type (An ex-hive ganger scum kitted out the same as Dray) and a militant cleric type (Eviscerator, light power armour, exterminator, gauntlet-mount bolt pistol) to the mix and buffed them all up to the equivalent of Rank 7 acolytes. Their leader had a boltpistol cyberskull, a MIU-linked plasma pistol, voxcaster and teleport homer. The sniper's initial ammo loadout consisted of Tempest bolt shell, Psycannon bolt shell, standard bolt shell, plus a few reloads of normal bolts. Those with bolters had AGLs and the trooper types had plenty of grenade options.

The team had the Mandato agents tailing them dead to rights and had cracked their coms, but there was the ongoing mystery of who or what else was operating on Sinophia. When they were pursuing a fleeing Mandato agent they round the corner on a rain soaked alley only to find the agent lying on the cobbles with a very fresh powersword wound through the chest: fast, clean kill! The pursuit threatened to reveal Spectre Cell 17's presence, so the Mandato agent was swiftly slain while out of visual contact... Subsequent inquiries as to possible powersword users kept leading to vague references to nobles or shrugs and gestures in the direction of their own Inquisitor (with a best quality Kantrael Power Sword on her hip!). Later, when the Throne Agents were looking into another Risen incident (the local Enforcers are out in force by this point due to open fighting in the streets, Spectre Cell 17 reveal themselves to some of the Enforcer teams, flash the badges and claim that they need assistance to take down a gang of heavily armed heretics. All they have to do is target an Arbites Rhino with speciffic hull markings with their heavy weapons and then clear out... So the team's borrowed Rhino takes a few Krak missiles (as well as a few missed shots, a bonus clue for the observant!) Now that they are forced to work on foot, Cell 17 springs an ambush along one of the river tributaries. The sniper's target priority was Magos (the HUGE scary flying bastard that swims through bullets), Psyker (Biokene healer/Templar Calixis), then Inquisitor (Stubborn Cadian ex-IG officer). Considering the skills and wargear of Cell 17's sniper plus the constant rain on Sinophia her concealment was something like 8 degrees of success! Some of the big brutes were spotted just as the ambush was getting triggered, but the opening act was a bolt shell from out of "nowhere" dropping the team's Techpriest to the ground!

This was a NASTY fight and to be honest it was probably the best part of the entire mission! In the end we had the Magos fighting with head crits from the start, the Adept playing dead with some bolter shrapnel in her intestines, the Psyker with a burnt fate point (Psycannon bolt to the head.... OUCH!), the Inquisitor with a cracked helmet and a nasty head wound, the Cleric (light power armour and rosarius!) with "minor" bolt wounds all over her body (she was deliberately taking fire from two bolters to shield others on the team) and the Guardsman/Cyborg's armour covered in steaming divots and craters from an amazing string of bad damage rolls hitting his carapace. Spectre Cell 17 Lost their Cleric when the Magos grappled him with his servo arm and proceded to literally tear him in half!! Likewise, their big Guardsman was incinerated by a massive blast of plasma and his own detonating ammo! Their Psyker was unconscious and bleeding with a severed arm and several of the remainder were starting to get pinned down when their Prime called for teleport evac. Much drama and heightened pulses! They managed to stabilize the Psyker and eventually break him (harder than it should have been, even for a trained Wytch!) which allowed me to drop some extra hints and clues that pointed towards Haarlock 3! The key here is to know your team's capabilities and push them hard when the story calls for it! Then make sure it is FUN! And yes, the team's Magos made **** sure to hijack the cyberskull from it's surprised owner! Survivors of course get to thicken the plot for Haarlock 3!